Marathon Training, Week 7

13 weeks until race day.

Had a bit of an injury last week.  Luckily, it wasn't my legs.  We were lifting weights on Sunday afternoon, and I was feeling all, you know, ambitious and strong.  Halfway through my second set of dumbell flys, I let my arms go out a little farther than usual and found myself unable to lift the left one back up and had to kind of twist my arm and drop the weight to the floor.  Immediately I knew I'd strained my tricep.  Initially it didn't hurt much, but by the next day it was pretty sore and on Tuesday it wasn't any better.  Before I started running I wasn't aware of this, but your upper body gets used more than you think when you run, so I held off on my Tuesday run and did it on Wednesday when my arm felt good enough for running but not quite good enough for a tricep workout.  It's all good now.

Friday's long run was my longest distance yet: 12 miles.  Made it in 3:17:20.  Not that I'm racing through my long runs, but I'm pushing myself to the upper end of "comfortable pace."  I was pretty happy with the end time, because that means my average pace was faster than my 8 mile run last week.  So, you know, w00t.

Since I've had a recurring problem with inner arm chafing, I tried wearing a yoga top I have that doesn't have trim on it.  That didn't solve the problem, although it wasn't quite as bad as it has been.  I guess I'm going to have to start experimenting with anti-chafing products, because the last thing I want to deal with on race day is the discomfort of my arm being rubbed raw.  It's not cool.

And I'm also going to have to start paying more attention to keeping up a regular stretching routine.  By about mile 9 my muscles were getting pretty tight.  But the hardest part of the increased distance was the sheer monotony of going around and around the loop 8 times.  I was only on the trail about 20 minutes longer than during my 10-miler, but this time I started to get tired of being out there after a couple of hours.  I'm curious to see if I have the same problem on my upcoming 14-miler.